The way the enemies of President Duterte make it sound, it is as if he is about to sign a martial law declaration that he has been working on the past several nights. They are wrong, the same way they have been wrong about Duterte in the campaign. They did not give Duterte a chance to win as president. He won. They think he will declare martial law. He won't.
I have always thought the enemies of Duterte, being well-educated and highly-privileged and, therefore, armed with choices and options on how to go about their lives, would be less gullible and naive than the uneducated, underprivileged masses who have no other recourse than to hang on to every word their president utters, as if it is the last thing they will ever hear in their miserable lives.
The enemies of Duterte, being well-educated and highly-privileged, have all the means to cross-check, fact-check, and even security-check the president to see if he is not saying things tongue-in-cheek. In other words, they do not have to take the president at his every word because they are in the best of positions to know better. And yet it appears that it is they who are precisely going nuts over what Duterte says.
It seems that Duterte is driving these people so crazy that I am beginning to suspect Duterte is deliberately saying what he has been saying to make his foes lose their equilibrium. He knows how his enemies hate martial law and so he is mentioning martial law at every turn. And true enough, his enemies are beside themselves with trepidation and angst, mouths dry and sleepless at the thought morning may not come.
But martial law is not the same for everybody. To those who have no use for free speech than to say a prayer for food on the table and tell a few ribald jokes over "tuba," martial law is no more spooky than the next "agta" tale. To those who have no need for travel than to sell produce at the next "tabo" in the barangay, restrictions to travel are no more inconvenient that the next bout of gout and arthritis.
To those whose politics are as real only as the money given in exchange for votes in elections that come when they come, they couldn't care less who is in power and for how long. All these intricacies of politics seem reserved only for those who are immersed in them and cannot, by their own choice, seem to get out of them and move on. They make their own hell and then blame others for their misery.
The truth of the matter is, not everybody suffered under martial law. Even those who suffered under martial are of two kinds. There are those who were really targeted by an oppressive regime, and those who asked for it and got it. The vast majority went about their daily lives. Some prospered and some remained the same. But all of them saw through martial law as they would any storm. Now they know not every thunder presages a storm. Others cower even from a passing car's exhaust bang.